


Come Home, Come Home

by TheLastStarkInWinterfell



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reminiscing, Sharing a Bed, gay sex is a good substitute for therapy right?, novel canon, only boris is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastStarkInWinterfell/pseuds/TheLastStarkInWinterfell
Summary: Theo goes back to Vegas.  Boris meets him there.Set about a year after the book ends.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 44
Kudos: 435





	1. Chapter One

Theo had never wanted to go back to Vegas.The idea of the city left a bad taste in his mouth, a hint of fear that he hid with smug distaste.A few of Platt’s friends made not infrequent pilgrimages West to blow thousands and make fools of themselves in strip clubs where no one knew them, and the few times he’d been halfheartedly invited, the idea getting tossed out for the bachelor party, even, he’d blown it off with a wan smile and hand-wave. _Gosh, so tacky_. _Could you really picture me on the strip?_

But of course, going back through his records, he’d made a few key sales to clients out there.Very key sales, in fact, that hinted at some subconscious attempt at vengeance- if he could get closure in nothing else, he could fill every gaudy penthouse in Sin City with barely passable fakes and fill his pockets with the profits.

He’d considered losing that receipt, gone so far as to slip it discreetly into his pocket to accidentally run though the wash or toss at his convenience, but then Hobie had come in with a cup of tea, and unknowingly guilted him into smoothing his shame back out, and splurging on a business class plane ticket.If he must return, he wasn’t making it an inch more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

Hobie must have sensed the reluctance as Theo packed his bag, sorting through his closet to find his lightest shirts a thrumming echo of packing his mother’s apartment, his father looming in the doorway like the angel of death come to spirit away his firstborn.

“Nervous about going back to your old… stomping ground?” He’d asked at Theo’s last lunch before heading to the airport.Stomping ground, exactly the kind of tactfully old-fashioned phrasing Hobie would use.Desolate Wasteland, might be more accurate.Shithole.Personal Hell.

“It’s not like you’re going to see anyone who knew you back then,” Hobie said.“Even if you did they wouldn’t recognize you, it’s been so long.Just order room service and pretend you never left New York.”

It was almost all true, but it didn’t make Theo feel better.He sweated through TSA, and waffled on taking something to knock himself out through the flight- it seemed so reminiscent of the only other time he’d flown into Vegas that some superstitious part of him worried it would be a bad omen, but once he buckled his seat belt he knew that spending five hours alone with his thoughts would be unbearable, and swallowed two pills.

As soon as he’d ordered the tickets he’d taken a picture of his computer screen and sent it to Boris- _guess where I have to go_.He was the only person, at least the one person alive, who might understand what was going through Theo’s head.He’d responded within moments _What days?_ And then _What a coincidence!I am going to California same time.I will come meet you_.It was far too perfect to be simple happenstance, but not a lie Theo was going to count the teeth on.

He still wasn’t sure where he and Boris stood- they’d only seen each other once since Boris had bid him goodbye at the airport in Antwerp- a kiss on each cheek and a cryptic _seems I only ever kiss you when we leave- this time I will see you soon, though_ \- that Theo only had a moment to wonder what the fuck that had meant before he was back in New York and everything was a blur once more.

He’d stopped by once- just a few hours in the city, only a layover, really, and Theo had taken him to dinner somewhere far enough from the Village to feel safe enough that no one he knew would stumble in.Boris looked even more wan, circles beneath his eyes darker than usual, and Theo didn’t know if it was the flight in or coming down off of something or him that was spreading Boris thin.The restaurant was casual enough that he’d brought Popchyk, who lay beneath the table resting his chin on Boris’ polished shoe, one of them occasionally sneaking him a bite or two of their meals.

“Amsterdam has more of a pain in my shoe,”- despite the ominous tone Theo couldn’t help but smile at the misused expression- “More trouble than I expected.No, no, don’t apologize, don’t worry.I am not in any danger or fear for my life.Just extra work.Many late nights.”He scratched the spot behind Popchyk’s ears that he could still find without looking.“Just tired, is all.”He moved his lips before he spoke next, as if running through multiple possibilities for what to say next. “Is worth it though, right?To have the weight off my chest.And to have you, back in my life and not so angry?”

“I was never angry!” Theo had laughed, and their fingers had been so close to each other on the table that they were almost touching, before Boris waved his hand in the air dramatically and changed the subject.

As soon as he stepped away from the gate he could feel his anxiety building.The airport was completely different from when he was a kid, no familiar landmarks to jolt him back into brutal memories, but still he was sweating through his shirt before he even stepped into the sunlight.He kept his eyes closed through the entire cab ride to the hotel, faking exhaustion from his flight, but really just avoiding reliving the backseat of his father’s car.Everything around him was a ghostly reminder of those sickening months after his mother’s death, the cold loneliness of the desert and the stinking unfamiliarity of a life gone wrong.It was as if the entire city was a personalized haunted mansion ride, tailor made to send him reeling backwards through his own psyche.

As soon as he was at the hotel he raided the minibar, look a shower hot enough to scald, and headed to his client’s apartment.

The meeting wrapped up fairly quickly- she hadn’t been a haggler or someone personally offended by the forgery- just a wealthy housewife clearly a little confused about what why he was making this much of a hubbub over a piece of her husband’s furniture, and more than willing to make payments and sign documents as soon as she tracked down all the paperwork and would he be willing to give her a discount on a replacement piece?Or perhaps help her track down a buyer for the fake?Simple as these sorts of arrangements possible could be, all told, but still meant a few more days in Vegas. It was one of the moments Theo wished he’d had Boris’ good sense to get a team of people working for him.

Boris was in the lobby when Theo got back, in heated phone conversation in a language Theo wasn’t even sure he recognized- something middle eastern, maybe?He grinned and held up a single finger when he saw Theo, and started talking even faster.As eager as Theo was to get upstairs- he was in one of the few middle of the road Vegas hotels that was nice enough to get a cab from but without a casino attached- he still enjoyed watching Boris speak.The change of language took him over completely, his shoulders drawn up and his motions sharp and chopping instead of the wide flamboyant hands he usually had.

“I am sorry- business never ends, no?” He said when he hung up, putting a hand on the small of Theo’s back as if to guide him through the walls, even though Theo was the only one who knew where they were going.“How long are you here for?”

“Day or two.”

“Ah.I can stay with you then.I can’t be taking vacations left and right but- should be no problem.Do you gamble?”

“God no, I just- I wanna stay as far away from Vegas as I can.Just watching movies with you in the suite sounds fucking fantastic.”

Boris made a small noise in his throat that Theo mistook for disapproval, and he started to mumble an explanation about crowds and his heart rate, but Boris waved it all away.

“Stop, stop, if you want to lie on the couch and eat french fries for the next three days I’m happy to do so.” 

Theo smiled, and before he knew it they were two bottles deep, barefoot and filling the ashtray, sitting on the floor against the couch like teenagers again, arguing about Thoreau and with girls at school were hot instead of just cute.Boris’ face was flushed scarlet with booze, and Theo could see the same flush at the top of his chest where he’d unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, the familiar angular shadows of his collarbones and sinewy throat.He was humming something vaguely familiar, and while Theo couldn’t place the song he recognized the distant look in his eyes and the slight smile on his chapped lips.They were in the best in-between state- faded away from reality enough that the invisible wall of whatever it is had fallen, but before they started puking and checking each other for gasping breaths.The specific place that Boris had a way of spiriting him away to too easily, and drawing him back so he lingered in glorious suspension, far from reality, knowing nothing but the camaraderie and laughter of being around each other.

“You remember, Potter?”

“Hmm?”Boris rapped the side of Theo’s head gently.

“I don’t know where you are right now, but it isn’t here.”The gesture had drawn him almost close enough to press his face against Theo’s- rest forehead-to-forehead, and for a moment Theo considered closing the gap, but then Boris stood, a little unsteady, and traipsed into the bathroom to get himself a glass of water.The movement broke Theo’s reverie, and he stood and smoothed his shirt out.

“This is weird, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Being back here, you and me, just-" he waved his hand vaguely in the air, raising an eyebrow.Boris shrugged.

“We’ve done weirder.”

“I’m right though, aren’t I?” _Please tell me I’m not crazy._ “It feels so… unreal.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go out?Is a big city, there are many ways to forget your troubles.Stronger drinks, girls-“

“What, you want to go to a casino?”

“I just want whatever will make you happy.”

Theo wasn’t sure if he’d meant that to sound so fucking committed.

“Whatever, I sure as hell don’t want to go see any dancers.”

“I didn’t say dancers!”

Theo looked, and Boris was smiling into his glass.Theo knocked his arm with his shoulder, and Boris bumped into the wall good-naturedly, laughing.

“When did you get so perverted?”

“Germany, probably,” and he thumped Theo’s chest in retaliation, and soon they were both laughing, hands on each other’s upper arms, half collapsed into each other and half play-fighting.

“I should- oh fuck!”Theo said, still laughing.“What time is it?”

“Ehh, three maybe?”

“Shit, I have to get to this lady’s house in the morning, and by the time I- I need to get to bed if I wanna get any sleep by tomorrow.”

“So I become a pervert and you become an old woman?”

“Fuck off Boris.”

They stood for a moment, as if unsure where to go from here.

“I’ll pull the couch out for you,” Theo said.“Unless you want to go back to your hotel?”

“I didn’t even get my own hotel.” Boris said, and they were both laughing again.All that money and he still took the first chance to freeload.

By the time Theo had undressed, slipped into an old t-shirt and his sweatpants, he was starting to notice how cold the hotel air conditioning was set.He padded out to the living room, ostensibly for some water, and paused in the doorway.Boris lay on top of the blankets, still in his clothes, tapping something quickly into his phone. 

“Is the couch alright?”

Boris shrugged, and Theo huffed in half anxiety and half annoyance at himself for what he had known from the start he was going to do.

“You don’t have to sleep out there if it’s uncomfortable.”Boris dropped his phone onto his chest.

“Well I don’t want to keep you up from your big fancy meeting.”

“Shut up.It’s a double.”

Boris grinned so wide Theo almost told him to fuck off again.Even though Theo had shared a bed with most of his girlfriends, and of course Kitsey, he’d always felt somewhat dishonest about it.At the time he’d chalked it up to how none of them had ever lived together, or maybe he just preferred to sleep alone, but whatever the reason he’d spent most nights lying awake, counting cracks in the ceiling and listening for floorboard creaks as if expecting some attack in the night.He’d wondered then how he’d been able to sleep every night with Boris beside him, slept better even with an arm over his waist and cold ankles threaded through his own.Booze maybe, or fear, but now suddenly the idea of crawling into the cold bed alone seemed nauseatingly terrifying.He wanted Boris beside him, just to hear his breathing and know he was there, less than arm’s reach away- whatever demons might seep up through the walls from the dark core of Vegas that Theo was so paralyzed of.

They’d shared a bed in Antwerp too, though Theo could barely remember it he’d been so sick, and Boris had dismissed it as necessity to break his fever.

Theo stared at the bedside lamp, pretending to be getting comfortable, and listened to Boris wriggle his way into the sheets beside him.Something about watching him clamber up beside him seemed too intimate to bear.

With a somewhat relieving finality, Theo clicked the lamp, and closed his eyes to the darkness.He could hear Boris’ breath- steady but not the rasp of sleep, and feel his warmth beside him even though they weren’t touching.Comforting, a presence he knew was ever present, ever gentle.He was slipping into sleep faster than he could remember doing.

Just before he was fully unconscious, he heard the mattress creak as Boris rolled closer, still not touching but now just the faintest tickle of his breath on the back of Theo’s neck.Slowly, so deliberate Theo would have almost dismissed it as his imagination if he hadn’t been expecting it, he felt the ghost of Boris’ hand trace up the curve of his spine- never making full contact, just barely brushing the wrinkles of his shirt, from just below the shoulder blades to the very back of his neck where his hairs prickled in a way that was both eerie and tingly exciting.Boris paused, and for a moment Theo wondered- wanted? hoped?- wondered if he would go far enough to wrap an arm over his chest, pull him in closer and press his forehead to Theo’s back until they started to lose track of whose limbs were whose.

But instead he drew his hand back, tucked it neatly back beneath the blankets, and whispered, so quiet it was almost a gasp.

“I missed you, Potter.”

The least sentimental part of Theo- the part he knew he had inherited from his father, reared for a brief hot moment.What the fuck was wrong with him- touching him as tenderly as an infant, whispering sweet nothings like they were- like they were what?Not what they were, which was two men who hadn’t spoken in eight years, two married, or at least almost married, men, only here on business.Fuck, he knew that if Kitsey had ever done something like that, so dripping and maudlin, he’d have to resist screaming into the pillow so intense would be his embarassment.

Instead though, whether it was the last film of booze, or being half asleep, or that it was Boris, Boris whose mere presence was intoxicatingly fucking _there_ , Theo responded with the truth.What had been the truth for eight years, every moment of muddling through incomprehensible Russian books or smoking cigarettes in an ostentatiously European way or gritting his teeth through bad dates and parties.What had been the truth from the moment he slid into that taxicab alone, clutching a civics book wrapped in newspapers.

“I missed you too, Boris.”


	2. Chapter 2

After work the next day Theo returned to the hotel to find Boris rearranging bottles in the refrigerator, an absurd amount of Chinese takeout containers on the counter.

“You’ve been busy,” he said, shrugging off his jacket. When he’d left Boris had still been asleep, curled into himself on his side of the bed.

“If you don’t want to go out, I bring it in here.” Flicking his head to knock the hair out of his eyes. “Booze from the hotel was shit, anyway. How is your furniture going?”

“It’s easy enough, I guess. Could be worse.”

Boris slid him a glass.

“To things that could be worse!”

The glasses clinked, and they drank.

“Did you have lunch? You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Boris looked at him with one eyebrow slightly raised, but didn’t say anything, and instead filled another glass for himself. 

“Come then, what movie would you like to watch?”

Theo should have eaten, because it seemed like he after only a few sips he was underwater drunk, half-slipping off the couch as Boris stood with one foot on the table, acting out dramatically the story he was telling- something about him and Gyuri getting thrown out of a bar- or maybe it had been a bordello, it was hard to tell when Boris slipped into Russian on the dialogue- when some territorial rivals had appeared.

“I have my gun drawn, of course, but behind my back and I’m too high to tell if they know, or if they know if I know they know and my head is spinning so fast I feel like I might throw up- which would really throw it, big tough Borya upchucking on a dancer! So Gyuri is trying to get me down the stairs without either of us falling, and that’s when the mean one with the eye thing says- _moj boze_ Potter, out the window!”

“He said-” And it took Theo a moment to follow Boris’ outstretched hand and see that he was pointing to fireworks going off in the lot of a nearby casino. With all the excitement of a child on Christmas, Boris rushed to the window, and stared wide eyed.

“Turn off the lights! Look, they will have the ones shaped like spaceships and aliens.”

Theo moved to the window beside him, glanced down at the sea of bright lights and distant tourists and the flashes of Technicolor beams, then to where Boris stood transfixed, glass still in one hand and a distant smile quirking his mouth. The flashes of light from the fireworks caught each curve of his face- the sharp cheekbones, crooked bend of his nose, illuminating his face in achingly familiar and foreign pools of shadow and blue and yellow flashes. The gleam of his eyes, the slight glint of teeth where his thin lips parted, and the stray curl that had escaped its place behind his ear and flicked playful at the corner of his jaw. A face that Theo had once known as well as his own, better even, he had avoided mirrors so assiduously, and the myriad of slight changes that time had wrought that Theo suddenly ached for not having seen take effect in person. The small scar just between his jawline and ear, the very faint trace of tissue across his lower lip Theo wasn’t sure anyone else would have noticed if they weren’t so familiar with Boris’ features. Without thinking, in an automatic gesture he didn’t remember allowing his body to make, Theo started to reach out to brush the hair away from Boris’ face and- and what? His hand only made it a few inches from his side before he caught himself, and raised his glass again, looking at the floor.

When he looked up again, he though he saw Boris’ eyes dart away, back to the window.

“America,” Boris said, voice a little throaty, “My god.”

“America?”

“This- all this is ridiculous. Disgusting. No other country- well, Dubai maybe- would build a city like this! Capitalism!” His laugh was deep and barking, like his fathers had been. “And we are wasting it!”

“Wh- wasting it?” Theo began to laugh as well, despite himself.

“I give it a few years until you finally have a revolution, and you all end up in breadlines and burlap! Not in a bad way, you understand, just-”

“What are you getting at?”

“I am saying that we are wasting the last moments of American excess by being locked up here in a hotel room.”

Theo wanted for a moment to fight, but then instead burst into laughter. Fuck, only Boris would try to get him out on the town with an argument about the fall of capitalism, not a thinly veiled concern for his loneliness, or a pitch about a great band playing nearby, or any of the other countless excuses he’d heard from Pippa and Hobie and Kitsey, good lord the excuses he’d heard from Kitsey. He was almost doubled over laughing, as Boris pushed his hands against his shoulders, his chest, giggling himself as he tried to explain his plan.

“I have-” he was laughing so hard for a moment Theo worried he wouldn’t ever catch his breath, and he’d die on the couch of a Vegas hotel, struck dead with joy. “I have a car downstairs!”

“Gyuri?” Theo gasped, but Boris, red-faced and excited, shook his head.

“No, my own! Well, rental, but my own to drive!”

“I thought you couldn’t drive?” Boris had retreated to the bathroom, and Theo could hear water running.

“I got my license sorted after- after what happened in Amsterdam. Last thing I need is to be caught in a situation like that again, get taken in for driving without a license and ruin a much bigger plan. That’s how most of us go down in the end, you know- taken in for something small and then everything unravels.” He emerged with his collar wet, but more under control.

“Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion,” Theo said, blinking and trying to take deep breaths, work himself back to lucidity. He didn’t like the idea of Boris sobering up while he still floundered waist-deep in drunkenness.

“Tax evasion is hardly a small thing Potter- hard work, must be very smart to keep up with- well, I suppose it depends what country you are in.”

While Boris yammered on about the IRS versus the Swiss government, Theo stumbled over to the counter and picked up one of the containers of food Boris had brought.

“Fine! But no casinos, no girls, and if I’m moping in the corner all night let me!” He took a bite of food- it was thoroughly cold by now, but he just shrugged it off. Boris was grinning so wide his face was like to split.

“And I am paying! Very well Potter, hard bargain, but I agree! Let me change my shirt though!”

In the elevator down, Theo noticed that Boris was wearing combat boots. Curious, he reached his foot over and tapped the toe. Steel. Boris lightly kicked his ankle. He kicked his shin back, Boris tried to stomp his foot and he dodged easily, putting Boris off balance and thumping into Theo’s shoulder. The elevator doors opened and they both straightened abruptly, trying to keep straight faces for the old couple who’d just come in. Boris jabbed Theo between the ribs, so quick his hand was back in his pocket before anyone could see, and they were both snorting with half-contained amusement until the elevator doors opened.

“They must think we’re shit-faced drunk.”

“We are drunk!”

And once again they were laughing, flushed and giddy, whispering jokes and stupid comments as they veered their way to the parking lot and Boris tried to remember which car was his. It was strange, the same kind of strange as packing his bags or leaving the Vegas airport, slipping easily into the faded imprint of the past as if he’d never truly left. Only with Boris he didn’t pull from it, instead was desperate to let himself slip away, over the horizon into some glowing distant _something_.

_Something._

“It will be a miracle if we find parking but my god, is easier than trying to get anywhere here on foot,” Boris was saying, trying and failing to light a cigarette with one hand while steering with the other and glancing occasionally at the GPS on his phone. “Fuck, light this for me, would you?” Without really thinking, Theo plucked the cigarette from Boris’ lips and placed it in his own, drawing out the flame with a slow inhale and passing it back loosely. Boris took it with a smile and an unknowable chuff that made Theo roll his eyes and look out the window.

“You remember Christmas dinner? When your father took us out here?”

“ _Praznyky?_ ”

“Yes, yes _praznyky_! We ate like pigs, remember? I felt like I was drowning in the lights, almost dizzy I was so happy! If God had struck me dead right there, well, I swear I would have died smiling.”

Theo remembered, of course he remembered, he remembered every second of it- Xandra laughing after her second glass of champagne, the way Boris’ hair had almost glowed in the golden light of the restaurant, how now matter how many times he rolled up his sleeve he still ended up trailing the corner through the sauce- it wasn’t his shirt anyway it was Theo’s father’s, his father, his father who-

“Can we not talk about back then?” Then immediately, “I’m sorry.”

“Is alright Potter. Maybe happy memories for me, not so happy for you. Is nothing to apologize for.” His hand was loose on the steering wheel.

“Yeah, sorry anyway.”

“Only thing to do then is make new memories tonight, yes? Wipe everything out, scribble all over the blank page.”

Theo giggled.

“Do you have any more of those cigarettes?”

Vegas was exactly as crowded and loud and awful as Theo had imagined. People in all directions, bumping him with their elbows and almost spilling their drinks on his chest, loud and boisterous and swelling with body heat musk. Bachelorette parties in matching pink t-shirts screaming at each other, men leering down the tops of waitresses in cocktail dresses, sunburned couples with dumpy khakis arguing to the edge of divorce. Thousands of people, enacting the same bored little dramas year after year, all packed into a room that was both too big and too small, gold paint peeling off of plaster corinthian pillars, carpet a vitriolic red gash that made him feel as if he was at the edge of a cliff. Arguments and affairs, champagne and bourbon, men and women, fear and loathing.

And through it all, Boris had a hand on his elbow, shoulders hunched in his dark jacket like a bird of prey pinpointing each dive he made. In the worst of the crowds he wove Theo through in a snaking path around vomit puddles and waitresses, always managing to somehow pull him into a quiet corner the exact moment he needed to breathe, pushing him to the front rows of musicians and magic shows, waving away anyone who came up to make offers or conversations with his characteristic hand motions. _Not right now, het spacibo, excuse us, ydy het, fuck off!_ Sometimes he would disappear from Theo’s side for a moment but always reappeared the moment Theo started craning his neck to find him with two drinks in hand- _calm down Potter, you miss me or something?_ And once pulled Theo into the bathroom with him, and, arms raised awkwardly in a makeshift barrier, offered him a baggie and key from his pocket- _nothing too strong, just for-_ and Theo couldn’t tell if he had brought it with him or somehow acquired it along the way. Despite the noise, he always knew just the spot where he could lean in, tuck his nose to Theo’s neck and mutter into his ear about those passing by, _what a cow, you see his hair, ah what a woman!,_ and Theo always chuckled and somehow, despite himself, was having fun.

They found themselves at a small, uncomfortably high table in a dingy bar, the kind of place Xandra had probably worked. Whatever upper Boris had given him had helped, Theo’s whole body felt a little looser, and he was talking, for him at least, a mile a minute. Boris, chin resting on the palm of his hand, was watching him with an unreadable smile, one Theo would have said was almost melancholy, if he hadn’t known better.

“I just feel like someone who went to school with us is gonna round the corner any second! Like, oh god, who was the one girl? The really pretty one- the one who liked you!”

“Liked _me_?”

“Yeah, all the girls liked you then- no this was- God, what was her name? Don’t you know who I’m taking about?” Boris, smiling, shrugged and threw up his hands in surrender.

“I’m sorry, I’m failing you!”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter who, just imagine anyone from back then running into us here! Asking us what we’ve been up to since school-”

“They would never recognize you Potter.” Theo blinked.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh you know, you were-“ a slightly chagrined smile. “You were so scrawny and all- what’s the word- unkempt, I suppose- back then. Kind of scary.”

“Thanks.”

“Am not insulting you, I was worse- only you have completely changed! You look like a proper gentleman now, so tall too- if someone saw us they would come up and say ‘ah, Borya, I remember you, you skinny little greaseball! But who is your handsome companion?’”

He smiled into his glass, and Theo didn’t know what to say for a moment. It had been said so lightly, half in jest, and Boris threw out compliments anyway, but something about calling him handsome had taken him aback.

“Y- no one called you Borya back then,” he finally stuttered out, and to reassert himself kicked Boris’ ankle under the table. Boris didn’t kick back, just looked at his hands.

“We won’t see anyone we know- eight billion people on this earth, and hardly none of them are as lucky as us.”


	3. Chapter 3

Maybe an hour later, or maybe more than that, they had split most of a bottle of mezcal, and Theo’s mood had shifted. They had somehow made their way to a booth at a club- Theo didn’t know how Boris had talked their way in, some sort of Eastern European solidarity with the bouncer, and something about the blasting electronica had put both of them in a state of mania. Boris had his arm around Theo’s neck, a little too close for the warmth of club, but Theo didn’t want to shove him off, something about the sweaty smell of his hair was making him even giddier than the booze and whatever it was they’d been snorting.

“I mean what- why can this fucking countr- fucking  _ county  _ fucking  _ state _ ,” Theo was saying, though his mouth was mostly speaking on it’s own, without his mind giving any input. “They can build all this but not functioning- a functioning fucking  _ child welfare system _ .”

Boris hummed agreement, but whether he was listening was doubtful, face buried in Theo’s shoulder.

“I mean why the  _ fuck  _ didn’t anyone call someone! It’s not like-“ swig of his drink, “Not like it wasn’t completely goddamn obvious we were fucking starving! They could give us shots and feel bad but they couldn’t put us-“

Boris groaned something in Russian, and though Theo had no idea what it meant, he took as agreement, nodding viciously.

“Do you think that it’s still there?” Boris said, quietly.

“What?”

Boris lifted his head from Theo’s shoulder, eyes red rimmed and one nostril caked with a film of dried blood that he rubbed at with his sleeve.

“Our house. Surely no-one moved in.”

“Fuck.”

Theo had never thought about what had happened to his house after he left, but now he could see it perfectly clear in his mind’s eye. An empty skull bleaching itself in the desert, swimming pool full of sand, and rats nesting in Popper’s doghouse. A sickening monument to their misery. Boris was still talking.

“Probably they tore it all down.”

“No, no, that would be a waste of money. That whole development was dead after 2008, and they were never gonna be able to build anything new there ‘cause of the- the-”  _ because it’s a sickening wasteland _ , “Because of the water thing.”

“I always thought,” Boris was sitting up, but a little unsteady, propped on his elbows. It reminded Theo of the way his father had leaned on the counters in the morning, trying to catch his breath before work. “Always thought it should have all been destroyed after we left. Like we were this big-” the word explosion caught in his throat, but he caught himself, giving Theo a cautious glance. “Big storm, just wiping everything out. Totally destroyed.”

“We could be.” Theo curled his hands into fists, sinking his teeth viciously into a terrible idea. “We could go out there right now- we could, I don’t know. Burn it down.”

“Burn it down?”

“Burn it down.”

Boris looked at him, then dug into his pocket for his hand mirror, cutting himself a line with careful deliberation, before he answered.

“Alright then, let’s go.”

Boris punched the address into his GPS without a second thought, and when he tossed his phone on the dashboard, Theo saw he’d remembered it perfectly. 6219 Desert End Road. Through the open windows the warm night air streamed through their hair, tantalizing and familiar, scent of sunned sand cooling under the night sky. The music playing, Theo didn’t know if it was Boris’ choice or the radio, not what Theo would have picked, for sure, but oddly perfect.

_ Overcast days never turned me on _

_ But something bout the clouds and her mixed _

The moon was a watery yellow, still obscured by waves of shimmering heat and the light pollution of the city. There were no lights ahead of them, just an endless reflection of flickering streetlights along an empty road, eventually winking out against the darkness of the deep indigo sky.

The headlights raked over a familiar granite sign, sun bleached and soaked in birdshit, copper letters for  _ The Ranches At Canyon Shadows _ stained a mottled green, and at that exact moment, Boris’ phone beeped that it had lost connection. Same for Theo, when he flicked it on. They sat in the car for a moment, staring at the sign, painfully aware of the emptiness of the desert around them, then Boris slowly eased onto the gas once again.

“If we do not know this place by heart still…” he said, but didn’t finish his thought. They drove idly, not speaking, just taking in the sight of the desolate streets- already shabby when they were kids, but now gone from ghost-town to junkyard. No lights in any windows, doors hanging open revealing living rooms with sandy floors. The paint on the houses was bleached where it wasn’t peeling, spots of cracked concrete on roofs and walls where tiles had slid off.

“Look,” Boris said, pointing to one house with a wall half-knocked in. “Someone has been stripping the wires.”

The further they got in, the more houses they saw with similar injuries, marks of sledgehammers, even a few blackened spots that might have come from blowtorches, or sparking wires beating them to their arsons.

“Fuck, where are we?” Boris said, squinting at a street sign that had corroded to complete illegibility. “Where’s the bus stop?”

Maybe they could have found their way back in the day time, tracing landmarks to the empty houses they’d once called home, but at night, heads still spinning? Not a chance. Besides, the mania that had seized them in the club had been tempered by the night air, and the sight of the dead houses had quieted them completely, the same sense of grim respect as visiting a cemetery. These weren’t the streets they’d walked beneath umbrellas, run through drunk and shrieking, just ghosts of what had already been dying the first time they set foot there.

“We were never navigating in a car,” Theo said. “It’s different.”

“I suppose, but still, shame to have driven all this way and not- oh!”

Illuminated in glaring white light, throwing out long shadows in all directions, was a playground. Not the one they’d loitered at as kids, this one was arranged all wrong, boxed in by concrete walls and rusted chainlink, but still, the same box set of play-structure, carousel, slides and swings. For a moment Theo couldn’t breathe, despite the car’s warmth and his grown-up jacket, his grown-up life, taking in the sight of something so similar to his old haunts making him feel like trying to draw breath in the coldest days of winter. He wanted to grab Boris’ elbow, beg him to drive, drive him all the way back to New York, or Antwerp, or Russia or anywhere but here, but before he could gather himself enough to speak Boris had slammed his door and rushed out to the playground, his form washed out and eerie in the glow of the headlights.

Being without Boris was worse than the fear of the playground, and Theo took a gulp of air and ran to meet him.

“Look at all this!” One of the swings hung loose off of one chain, and everything was rusted and crooked. Boris spun in the middle of it all, arms outstretched, hair a wild mess of curls around his face. “Gone to the dogs, no?”

“This isn’t even the same playground, Boris,” Theo said weakly, leaning against the side of the play structure. Boris tried to dart up the slide behind him, a clumsy attempt to sneak up on him and ruffle his hair, but his foot slipped, and he went down hard, elbows and knees clattering on the hard plastic.

“Ah fuck.” His strained voice echoed off the walls, and Theo laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, rounding the corner to see Boris in a heap on one half of the low twin slides, his face and hands glowing pale against the dark heap of his rumpled clothing. His eyes shone.

“Are you alright?”

“ _ Niebiosa _ Potter, come lie down with me.” He was staring, mouth open, at the sky above him. Theo perched himself awkwardly on the mouth of the slide beside him, easing himself down, but as soon as he saw the sky he knew why Boris had called him over.

There were more stars than he had ever seen in his life. No clouds to shroud them, they festooned the sky in glowing swathes of light, seeming to dip over and under like the two of them rested not beneath the sky but beneath the ocean, staring at distant lights from civilizations long dead churning forever into the blackness between stars.

“No pollution out here anymore, I guess.” Theo said. His throat felt dry. The Milky Way cut across the sky in glistening streaks, dancing and waving scarves of planets, galaxies and solar systems cartwheeling around two men on a tiny spinning planet, feet in the sand and head thousands of miles above. Theo stared, eyes wide, not sure if he’d ever seen anything so fantastic, until he thought he started to see bursts of violet and blue, supernovas and spinning collisions of planets, bursting and extinguishing life that would never know he existed.

When he turned his head, Boris was looking at him.

“Wish we had some fucking acid,” he whispered, and Theo laughed, rolling to look at him more fully. Starlight caught in his eyelashes.

“I’d freak out tripping here.”

“Why?” Theo could tell by the tilt of Boris’ eyebrows he really meant the question. Biding himself time while he found the words, he dug into his pocket, found two loose cigarettes, and lit both of them in his mouth. The warm glow of the flame caught the side of Boris’ cheek, filling out all the hollowed shadows and for a moment Theo had to blink to make sure he wasn’t looking at a face from ten years ago, a grinning fifteen year old nursing a bloody nose and a black eye. He passed him one of the cigarettes, exhaled, and caught his own thoughts.

“This is where it all started isn’t it? I mean except for-”  _ the choking smoke of the museum, white dust streaking his face and blood ringing in his eyes _ . “This is where it came to a head. I was so- so miserable.” Shook his head. “I mean god, if I’d never come out here, I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so fucked up. No drugs, no- I don’t know. My dad did a number on me.”

Boris propped himself up on his elbows, and Theo waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.

“I mean, at the time I guess I didn’t realize how bad things were. The two of us were having fun, but- I mean it was fucked up. We fucked ourselves up.” Theo flailed, not knowing what to say, and finally Boris spoke, looking at his boots.

“You were sad then. And not because you were here.”

Theo shrugged.

“Well- I mean God, no one was taking care of us, we were just-” he stopped. “Jesus Christ, we could have OD’ed or drowned and probably no-one would have even noticed! If we’d both died of alcohol poisoning on my bedroom, how long do you think ’til Xandra would’ve noticed the smell?”

Boris reached up gently and flicked Theo’s temple with his forefinger and thumb, not hard enough to actually hurt.

“What, we both die same time? Are we poisoned? Romeo and Juliet? We had each other.”

“What, two kids in the middle of nowhere? I mean, if something had happened to you- something really serious, I mean, I would have been useless. Fucking useless.”

He sat all the way up, leaning over where Boris still half laid on the slide.

“You said you had to drag me out of the street! You only had to be too late once for it to all be over. What if-“ he gestured at his eyebrow, where the scar from his father’s cane still snaked white on white across Boris’ skin. “What if that had hit an artery? Or broken your skull! I wouldn’t have been able-  _ fuck _ , Boris I was so scared!”

“Potter, you’re tearing up.” Theo hadn’t even felt the tears until Boris swiped his thumb beneath his eye, and he felt the trail of tears glisten cold on his cheek. His glasses were askew, and he watched as a half blurry Boris absentmindedly touched his thumb, a teardrop still clinging to his skin, to his dry tongue. “You’re right Potter, you are. Children shouldn’t have to take care of each other like that, but well, we did a good job, didn’t we? To be sitting here now, together? Alive, neither of us in prison or strung out and toothless.” Theo laughed despite himself, the sound mangled through his tears, even though it wasn’t really because it was funny so much as he needed to laugh instead of wailing.

“Your standards are low.”

“Maybe, maybe, but if we hadn’t had each other, we would have died.”

“What?”

“I would have run away from home, gotten myself shot for stealing. Or my dad would have kicked me down the stairs. Same end result. You too, I think, without someone there to stop you.”

Theo looked at him again, and now Boris too had to rub at his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket.

“Sad, yes, but I had been kicked around my whole life. No different here, just hotter. For you, maybe, Vegas was hell, it was really, the hunger and the smell and the fucking sand. But ah, for me? I had seen worse and I was just happy! To have a roof over my head and somewhere where nobody hit me or yelled at me and to have friends! I never wanted it to end.”

He sniffed, and looked at Theo, ran his eyes over him in a way that cut deeper than anything he had said.

“Turning point maybe, like you said. If truly this was where everything went bad for you, I’m sorry. But for me, my god! First time I really realized that I wasn’t just a scrawny drunk. First time I had somebody love me.”

Theo blinked, but Boris didn’t even look at him, just took a drag of his cigarette and watched his smoky exhale slowly dissipate into the still air.

“Maybe that was why I took your bird,” he said, as if it was just an afterthought. “Keep something with me.”

“I didn’t think-”

“What? Didn’t think I knew what was going on? Please.”

His hand found where Theo’s rested on the partition between the slides. His fingers were nearly as cold as the metal.

“I thought I have told you are not nearly as subtle as you give yourself credit for, Potter. Especially back then. Especially when drunk!” He laughed, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to torment you.” 

He forced himself up and started to fix Theo’s glasses, and Theo could feel how much his hands were trembling, trying not to let his cigarette- still held loose between his middle and ring finger- brush Theo’s hair.

“Why’d you give it back then?”

“Hmm?”

“The painting. If you wanted a piece of me forever you could have kept it forever. Even if I did put two and two together I didn’t have any way to track you down.” Glasses straightened, Boris’ hand had dropped to Theo’s shoulder, drawing them to within inches of each other. “I wouldn’t have, anyway. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I sent you to prison.”

“Easy to say now, Potter-”

“Answer the question.” Theo’s hands on Boris’ elbows, perilously close to pulling him into himself, the poised position of two subjects in a Renaissance painting- obscenely captured just moments from what they knew was already going to happen.

“Because a painting is a poor substitute. I would rather have you- flesh and blood and booze and all than all the bird paintings-”

On a street corner not too far from where they sat, a street they would have recognized immediately if they’d been unlucky enough to pass it on their way in, two boys had said goodbye to each other, never expecting to see each other again, never expecting the other to live through the next year, hardly expecting it of themselves. And now, silhouetted once again by car’s headlights, fingers bunched in Boris’ shirt, with nowhere to go and no-one to see, Theo finally returned the kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boris definitely chose the music.


	4. Chapter 4

Theo had kissed Boris before- European pecks on the cheeks where his hand lingered for a moment longer than it needed to on his shoulder, the shock of the kiss the last night in Vegas, and all the times before that Theo didn’t remember so well. This was different. One of his hands slipped beneath Boris’ jacket, cradling the warm curve of his side, the other tangled in his shirt, a few fingers creeping between the buttons to brush his bare skin. Boris had one arm around Theo’s neck, trapping their heads together, the rest of his fingers tangled in Theo’s hair, pushing his glasses up to his eyebrows. Their first contact was awkward, Theo pushing too hard, not used to Boris’ teeth, but then it was soft and warm and a little smoky and nice, so nice. So  _ nice _ .

Boris pulled back, resting his forehead against Theo’s, already panting. They both tried to speak at once, whispers wet against each other.

“Fuck Potter, I’ve waited for-”

“You’re the only-”

Boris’ fingers were toying with the buttons on Theo’s collar, pressing his lips into his neck, kissing him just above where his shoulder turned bony, biting hard enough to leave a mark the next morning.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever- oh  _ fuck  _ Boris, that’s- you’re the only person I-” he’d pushed Theo’s shirt open, nibbling at Theo’s collarbone, kissing him again when it became clear Theo wouldn’t be able to finish his thought.

“ _ Show me then Potter _ ,” and Theo tangled his fingers in Boris’ hair and tried to remember everything a woman had ever done to him that had felt good. He wanted to make him tremble, whimper, he wanted to actually do something for once that might start paying Boris back for all he’d done for him, might start making up for everything Boris had ever suffered.  _ Sorry about all the times I finished off your bottle while you were in the bathroom, sorry for all the times you had to carry me home, sorry about dragging you under in the pool until you almost choked in blood, sorry that I couldn’t ever stop him hitting you, sorry for leaving you here, sorry about the scar on your arm does kissing you like I mean it and not like you’re the most convenient thing help? _

He let his hands fall to Boris’ waist, tugging at his belt with fumbling fingers. He didn’t know if it was the still fading drunkenness or nerves or just the overwhelmingness of Boris’s lips, but he couldn’t get it undone. Laughing and panting, forehead nestled between Boris’ shoulders and neck, he did his best to explain.

“Your belt. Is fucking impossible.”

Boris kissed his ear, blew a puff of warm air after it, making Theo wriggle, and resting his hands beneath Theo’s, slipped the loops out easily, guiding Theo’s hands over button and zipper until Theo figured out what he was doing, and went back to Theo’s neck, moaning softly into his collar.

It was awkward, in a nice way. Theo hadn’t done anything like this, since the last time he’d done something like this with Boris. Reliving his first floundering sexual experiences with lucidity and burning want to make up for lost time.

Boris was rocking into Theo’s movements, gasping and whispering what might have been Polish and might have been nonsense sounds, and even though he wasn’t entirely sure what he would do when he got there, Theo kissed Boris’ chest and then bent lower. It only took another minute for him to raise up again, and spit over the side of the slide into the sand.

“I’ve never done that before,” Theo said, running his tongue over his teeth. “Unless-”

“You’ve never done that before,” Boris said, buttoning his pants. He was blinking a lot, smiling even though he tried to hide it. “Sit back, would you,” and gave Theo a light push in the stomach before lowering himself to his knees in front of him.

He had definitely had more practice at this than Theo.

“Ah fuck Boris, no-one’s-” Theo started to say when he was done, watching Boris, still between his knees, expertly push the hair back out of his face, but before he could finish he burst into laughter, almost crying in mirth.

“Don’t laugh at me! Whore!” Boris cried, swatting at Theo’s knee even though he was laughing himself, finally flopping backwards into the sand to kick and roll, covering his face with his hands. “Whore!”

“Careful, don’t accidentally lie down in your own-” Theo cut himself off with his his own laughter again, and Boris rolled onto his side to scream a particularly hurtful Russian curse into the sand before grabbing Theo’s ankle and tugging as hard as he could, sending Theo half stumbling and half flying to kneel in the sand beside him.

“You told me I was the only boy you’d ever been with,” Theo said, hands on either side of Boris’ head, staring down at him.

“I have told you worse lies, Potter. Now move, I can’t see the sky.”

Theo didn’t even bother to look at the stars this time, just watched Boris’ face as he giggled to himself. Cheeks flushed, a little sweaty, constellations of sand clinging to his dark hair. His eyes were crinkled in happiness, eyebrows dancing up and down and eyes darting contentedly across the night sky.

“Aren’t you glad you left the hotel room? Could never see stars like this there.”

“Yeah,” Theo whispered. Boris bit his lower lip as he scanned the sky, a contented gesture of his Theo had only seen a few times before, one hand resting on his chest and the other brushing against Theo’s.

_ I did that _ , Theo thought.  _ I made him that happy _ . And he felt good about it. He grabbed his hand and squeezed, and Boris squeezed back.

It had been on the playground when Boris had kissed him for the first time- lips to knuckles, blood mixing together in a crimson streak he’d stared at on his shirt the next day. Blood Brothers, he’d thought then, like something out of the Hardy Boys or a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, only now it was occurring to him for the first time that perhaps that had been the wrong word entirely. He tried to imagine what it would have been like if he and Boris had been somewhere else- been different people not entirely warped by their father’s. Somewhere safe.

“I can’t believe we used to do this as kids,” he said finally, trying to put whatever he was feeling into words. Boris rolled onto his side to face him, and smacked his chest, stinging bare skin where Theo’s shirt was still unbuttoned.

“Ow,” Theo smiled.

“You fruit!” Boris froze before he could continue, and Theo saw his face had fallen, brows furrowed and eyes probing the darkness just beyond the beam of the headlights. “Do you see that? Quiet. Move slow.”

Theo sat up slowly, squinting into the dark. His glasses were fogged, and between that and the dark it took an agonizingly long time, Boris’ hand on his back, to see what he meant.

There were two silhouettes behind the light, low to the ground, just by the driver’s side door of Boris’ car.

“ _ Khernya? _ That’s not human,” Boris’ hand tightened on Theo, and Theo realized with a little bit of humor that Boris was actually a little afraid.

“Coyotes.”

“Coyotes?”

“Yeah, Xandra always said there were a bunch around here- part of why I used to get so antsy about leaving Popchyk out at night. She said they were too scared of humans to come up here.”

“No humans here anymore.”

“Guess not.”

“What do we do?”

“Don’t know.”

They stayed still for a few more moments, staring down the shadows of the animals, and then Boris cleared his thought and yelled at them so loud Theo had to cover his ears.

“ _ Trakhat’sya _ ! Assholes!”

The coyotes backed away, and sensing fear, Boris clambered to his feet and ran at them, screaming swears. His belt was still undone, and the buckle swung by his knees while he ran, making a slithering escape from its loops before he caught it and draped it around his neck.

“Come on Potter! Our cue to go!”

The drive back to city, Theo didn’t know what to think. Through the windshield he could see the stars beginning to fade the closer they got to the city lights, music drifting behind them into the night.

_ Still waking up in the morning with shaking hands _

_ And I’m trying to find a girl who understands me _

He tried to remember what the layout of his father’s house had been, the couch where he and Boris had languished away drunken days, the leaky sink in his bathroom with the perpetually slippery floors, the closet, the kitchen, the bed. He wondered if his father’s shirts were still hanging in the closet, decayed and moth-eaten as coyotes nested beneath the bed. Neither he nor Xandra were ever good at remembering to close the door, by now sand was probably scattered across the living room, sticking to the tacky remnants of tape behind his headboard.

Boris’ thoughts were not far from Theo’s- he was telling a story about Xandra, more to himself than Theo, voice barely loud enough to hear over the wind whipping through the windows.

“Couple times we came close, maybe- not attraction, you know, just two lonely scared people. But she was still decent woman, whatever you think of her- looked after me best she could.”

Maybe Vegas had only ever existed for them, and now that its job was done it would exhale with a shudder and collapse.

In the bathroom at the hotel Theo stared at himself in the mirror, neck already blossoming light pink, hair tousled and sandy. The back of his shirt was stained filthy gray from the gravelly sand they’d been lying in, streaks of rust on the sleeves. He could hear the bedsprings squeak as Boris got comfortable in the bedroom, kicking a space for himself in the blankets. The lights were out when Theo emerged, Boris’ form a still silent mass just visible in the light from the bathroom door. He slipped into the sheets beside him, and listened to his breathing for a moment before curling round him, arm encircling his thin waist.

“Sorry,” he whispered into the back of Boris’ neck, and Boris rolled into him, skin against skin.

“What are you apologizing for?”

“I don’t know. Taking so long.”

Boris tipped his head towards him, and they kissed, not hard and desperate like at the playground, just acknowledging each other, reveling in each other’s presence.

“Is not the first time, Potter,” he whispered, Theo’s mouth moving down to his chest, hands relearning all the spaces between Boris’ ribs, tracing over scars and bruises. Wandering down his body, kissing the stick and poke on his shoulder, the rose on his bicep, faded needle marks. “You get drunk as a kid you told me. Crying, saying Boris  _ I hate how he hits you, I wish I could take you to California, I wish we could stay together forever _ .” Theo kissed the star of David on his wrist, then kissed it again just for good measure. “It was nice to hear,” Boris finished as Theo found his fingers, scarred knuckles and delicately calloused thumb. “To be cared for.”

Theo let Boris’ hand fall from his mouth, but kept it curled in his fingers. They were two parentheses, curled into each other with an ocean left unsaid between them.

“I meant it. I mean it Boris, I love you.”

“I know you do, Potter,” Boris said, pressing Theo’s hand to his chest as his eyes drifted closed. “You mean it with all your heart, but you never remember you do in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desperadoes Under The Eaves, by Warren Zevon


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took so long to get out guys! back to school blues... anyway, one more little one after this, and we'll be complete!

Boris was gone from the bed when Theo blinked awake to the sound of glasses clinking in the living room.The sheets were gritty with sand, and Theo’s tongue had a foul film on it, head pounding.He crawled away, groping for the water glass on the bedside table, and groaned to find it empty. Forcing himself to his feet he stumbled to the bathroom, swallowed two aspirin dry and set the water to scalding hot.

In the shower he did his best to scrub the sand from his hair, clawing with fingernails until his scalp stung.He could see the purple and brown marks dappled across his neck and chest, most of them easy to hide with a collared shirt, just a few tracing the edge of his jaw he knew Hobie would raise an eyebrow at when he arrived home.His back hurt from sleeping wound through Boris’ limbs, distant pains in shoulders and calves he couldn’t explain.He gulped water and spat it onto the tiles, but the bitter alcoholic tint in the back of his throat remained no matter what he did.Shirt buttoned to the collar, he went to greet Boris.

Boris was sitting on the couch, hair still wet from the shower and feet bare, watching the morning news with the sound off and a cup of tea with two tea bags in one hand.He didn’t look at Theo when he sat down beside him.Eyes deep in his skull, sleepy, face more lined than seemed usual.

“Morning.”

“Morning Potter.”

How many times, Theo wondered, had they done this?Nights wrapped in each other, burning each others skin and souls so deep it seemed impossible to fade, only to shrug it off in the morning as if it was inconsequential, as if it didn’t matter, as if it wasn’t the only thing that mattered.The way Boris’ hair curled over his ears was too much.One of his legs bounced impatiently.

“How’d you sleep?” Theo finally asked, lamely.

“Fine.”His voice was a little choked, his own throat cutting him off.He looked straight ahead, eyes glassy, not even sparing Theo a glance.He’d left a pod of instant coffee powder and one sugar packet lying beside the coffee maker for him.As if suddenly thrown from his body Theo could see himself making his coffee like it wasn’t laid out for him, him and Boris getting breakfast, driving to the airport chatting about the weather and rude flight attendants as if they were what they pretended to be.Going back to New York and shrugging off Hobie’s looks and calling Kitsey to get dinner for the first time in months.Maybe Boris would come to the wedding- whether he was invited or not, and Theo wondered how long marriage would keep them away from each other, a year or two until he was conveniently in the city the same day as Kitsey’s girl’s night, or maybe Theo wouldn’t even be able to help himself through the reception, let Boris pull him into the marbled bathroom and give him something to think about on the honeymoon.Leaving marks for Kitsey to find and not comment on, like she’d been doing all along.The future was a ball of cotton in his chest cavity, dry and unbreathable and inevitable.

He thought about Hobie, his cigarettes and varnish stained fingernails.The ease with which he carried himself when he moved throughout the house, never creaking a floorboard or scuffing the siding.Every time he’d put a hand on Theo’s shoulder with a whispered word of encouragement, whether Theo had deserved it or not, sighed and let things drift off his shoulders like Theo never could, every way he was different from Larry and Mr. Barbour and all the dull men who’d squinted down at Theo’s thick glasses and nervous hands and not known what to do besides send him off somewhere to look after himself.Every time Hobie had tried his best and muddled through things that didn’t make sense, that no reasonable person would expect him to handle with grace.

A few years back, when Theo was nineteen, during that watery in between when he was no longer too scared to speak but not yet smart enough to stay silent, on Audrey’s birthday, he and Hobie had gotten drunk together.Theo was on the verge of weeping all night- stories about her spilling out in snippets of barely coherent memory, as Hobie kept his hand on his forearm and nodded earnestly, switching him from whiskey to tea to water as the night went on.The talk had turned to Pippa, how much they missed her, and Hobie had brought out a photo album he kept in his bedroom.Pippa as a child, clutching Welty’s hand at her first music recital. Pippa sitting between the two of them at lunch, grinning at the camera as Welty’s hand settled over where Hobie’s lay on the tablecloth.The pages turned, years flitting away from the subjects of the photos, and at some point Hobie fell silent, caught up in his own memories of younger days.He and Welty in matching pinstripes and bowler hats- Laurel and Hardy for some long ago Halloween party- arms linked and laughing into each other.Pouring each other drinks, lighting cigarettes, snapshots they took of each other with sleep tousled hair smiling over breakfast.Welty’s head in Hobie’s lap beneath a summer sky, easy in each other’s company.The faces on either side of them shifted, hands on the camera changed, but they remained steady in each other, on couches and at nightclubs, hair long or tucked back or trimmed army steady but always with a hand on the small of the other’s back, nose pressed to the other’s cheek.Laughing, talking, kissing as if someone wasn’t just watching but photographing- capturing that moment forever to let anyone look back on it and know, know about the love they felt for each other and the world around them.

A burning desire had overtaken Theo, yearning for something he had known for a long time.To just exist, as if there was no reason for him not to.Stop slicing himself to pieces and storing them behind the bed and let anyone walk through and get a good look at what he was, just a man with his arm around the person he loved, showing off to the whole world that he was happy, no regrets or fears or secrets.It had been a wave welling up from within him, the want to live in the way he had been made.As if he had earned the right to joy, as if he wasn’t a boy who had killed his mother, as if he and Boris weren’t two criminals, two sacks of shit with nothing to offer the world but misery and each other.He had spent the rest of the night wanting to retch, but he knew damn well that if liking men was something you could spit up he would have done it by now.

But Boris, Boris with his scars and cigarettes, who had attached himself to Theo’s side and refused to leave no matter how terrible he was, Boris deserved better.Stubbornly loyal, beautiful in his sharp corners and mottled knuckles, the hurricane of a man who could pick Theo up at any moment and drop him miles away from wherever he’d been.If he didn’t say it, Boris might spend the rest of his life dancing around it, too afraid to hurt him in a way that couldn’t be fixed with a gunfight.Theo could dissect himself all he wanted, but he couldn’t let Boris dangle.

“My shirt-” Theo said, and stopped himself, took a breath.Boris was eyeing him through his lashes, entire body stilled.Theo looked back blankly, suddenly lost once again.How had they come this far together- killed for each other, torn each other’s lives apart and rebuilt it together brick by brick, for the most obvious truth to still have to claw itself bloodily from his chest.Only a few feet from each other, a perfectly casual morning scene if anyone had walked in, and yet the air around them was stone, quicksand, both trapped in stillness.Theo could feel how tight the muscles of his back were, fighting the urge to cross his arms and draw his shoulders to his ears like he did when walking beside Kitsey, closing himself off.

He cleared his throat, set the kettle to boil just to give himself something to do with his hands.Boris made a small noise, just a puff of air through his nose, really, and turned back to his tea.If Theo hadn’t known him, hadn’t memorized every one of his mannerisms like a sculptor studying his muse, hadn’t been able to write pages about each quirk of his eyebrow if he'd wanted to, he might not have even noticed it.But he knew exactly what it meant.Disappointment.Hope dashed on the rocks of Theo’s incompetence, whatever momentary glimpse of change a false positive, just as he’d thought.It was too much for Theo, too much to let him down again, the only person who had always done his best for him, who always made enough food for two no matter how little Theo ate, who plucked glass out of Theo’s palms on the bathroom floor, fingers trembling with fear, rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke in the night before passing out himself.

“My shirt’s filthy,” Theo finally said.“From rolling around in the sand with you last night.”The kettle clicked, steam burbling from the top. _I remember_. _Maybe there are lots of things I remember that I just haven’t told you_.“I’m never gonna be able to wash it out.”

“Your own fault for wearing white,” Boris said, quiet.Gentle.His teacup rattled against the table.Theo’s shoulders sagged, and he focused on pouring his cup of coffee. _Too little too late_.

When he turned around Boris had padded across the room, and before Theo could apologize again or even put down his coffee cup he had caught Theo’s face in his hands and kissed him.His lips were dry and had a hint of chamomile to them, and were gone before Theo could reciprocate.

The morning light shining through the cracked window blinds was suddenly blinding, shining off the planes of Boris’ face, pale skin broken only by slashes of dark hair falling across his face.

“What are we gonna do, Boris?”

“What we always do, Potter.Just keep going.”

“I mean we can’t-” Finding words was hard, kissing Boris in the sober sunlight was more intoxicating than anything Theo had ever taken.“We can’t just- just go back to our regular lives now, can we?”

He couldn’t.Now that this thing was real there was no way he would be able to just go home and pretend it wasn’t.Whatever that meant- an overdue talk with Hobie or a call to Pippa or more likely a fact that has always been known but not spoken of suddenly bobbing to the surface of the pool.Surface tension stretched so thin it at least gives way and he has to gasp for air in the cold clear sunlight.

“Regular lives?”Boris said.“What do you want, we get married?Adopt some kittens and have pancakes for breakfast?”He was so casual, leaning back with his elbows on the counter as if Theo wasn’t about to lurch into him and kiss him so hard it hurt.As calm as he was, the corner of his mouth quirked up just a little, giving away everything. 

“I want it if you want it,” Theo said, and it was true.He could imagine any world as long as Boris were beside him.Quiet suburbia that would have driven him to insanity with anyone else, seemed wonderful if he had Boris to complain about the mowed lawn and dull neighbors with, all the quiet space they could ever want to fill with chatter.Anywhere would be heaven with him- a cramped flat in London where a rusted tea kettle and tattered curtains, a sprawling Los Angeles mansion he filled with art and Boris filled with people who promised they’d just be staying a week but never left, or a beach house in Indonesia on the verge of being reclaimed by the jungle where he let Boris take him hand and lead him barefoot into the warm waters.

“We were not made that way, Potter,” Boris said quietly, and Theo forgot for a moment that Boris couldn’t read his thoughts.

“We-” Theo knew, of course, but wanted desperately to pretend he didn’t.“We could though.Someday.We could both-”

We could both get better.Kick our habits and drag ourselves to the doctor’s office and maybe try meditation or exercise or one of those things Pippa claimed helped.And they could meet up, newly healed and hair still wet from the shower, and meet the rest of their lives hand in hand.Impossibilities, mirages of futures that flickered in and out of Theo’s mind so quickly he never got quite got the shape of any of them.He only knew one thing.

“I wanna be with you!”Not even romantic.Not even sexual.Just near him.Boris put one hand on Theo’s chest, fingers fanning out as he stepped closer, other hand on Theo’s hip, pressing his forehead against Theo’s collarbone.He was a warm weight against him, pressed into him as gentle as the summer sun, the only time he had ever seen Boris do something with delicacy.When he spoke, it was muffled against Theo’s shirt.

“I am with you.I risk my life for you, travel across the world and still that is not enough to prove that I’m with you always?”

Slowly Theo brought his arms up around him, not clutching, just putting something between Boris’ back and the rest of the world.

“We see each other here and there.Phonecalls.Not radio silence like before.Best we can do, maybe.Is that enough for you?”

_No.No I want to see you every second of every day I want to plan my life around yours I want to watch you brush your teeth in the morning and get a headache ‘cause you drank too much and hop out of bed shirtless and barefoot for a glass of water and I want to hear your horror stories and see the way your face changes when you do the voices not just hear them.I don’t want to only know you in hotel rooms and rooms that don’t have your footprints._

“Of course you’re enough.”

“Maybe we will both live to be old.And our wives will be dead, and our children grown, and no-one will remember us.Maybe then.”

Theo knew this was his own fault.The first time he could admit he wanted something, he’d already fucked it up so he couldn’t ever get it, not really.The only thing he’d ever wanted, the moonlight shining through the snow that showed him which way to dig, the only person in his life who had given him everything they had to offer- not what they though would be best or most helpful but really everything, better or worse, heroin and lighters and all the love that could fit inside a small battered body abandoned in the desert.

Lifetimes ago, they’d both been lying entangled in Theo’s stained sheets.Boris had a cigarette dangling between two fingers, perilously close to the sheets, as if should Theo let him slip into away into drunken sleep, he might immolate both of them.Bruises on his arms from his father, others on his neck from Theo’s lips a few hours earlier.Despite them just lying beside each other, no outside urgency or demands, Theo felt frantic, the way he’d had when Andy had smacked his head on the dresser and his mother had instructed him not to let him doze off until Mrs. Barbour’s car arrived in case he had a concussion.

“If we ever did go to California, what would you wanna do?” He whispered, worried Xandra might hear them through the walls.Boris didn’t open his eyes, but Theo knew from the twitch of his lips he was thinking.

“Sleep on the beach.I did it on Indonesia- your neck hurts like a bastard but it’s worth it.No rent too.”

“Could we bring Popchyk?”Boris rolled, looking at Theo with sleepy eyes, hair a tangled mess flopping over the side of his face.Theo could smell the sweaty reek of him, feel the warmth of his breath.They weren’t quite touching yet.

“Of course,” he said, smiling softly.“Spoiled little mutt would hate it though.”He grabbed Theo’s wrist and yanked, pulling him over himself so Theo’s chin rested on his chest.His heartbeat thrummed through Theo’s soul. “We work- just enough to eat, not enough to get tied down.We sleep on the beach when it’s warm and under the eaves when it rains.Just you and me.Nobody tells us what to do.Nobody but each other.”

Theo had fallen asleep that night dreaming of Boris with sandy hair and smiling eyes, and awoken nine years later in a Vegas hotel room, realizing he’d let himself slip through his fingers, and there was only one thing left for him to hold on to.He let his fingers wind familiarly through Boris’ hair, the way they ached to do, pressed their lips together, eyes scrunched closed, and blood pounding in their ears.Knocking against the counter and the couch until they found something to lean against, together.

Maybe Theo had fucked it all up- missed their chance to live in contented squalor, bringing paychecks from dead-end jobs and stray cats home to a one room apartment in the Tenderloin, smoking themselves into oblivion intertwined on a dingy mattress, suspicious of anyone but those who had also weathered the weary march of abusive fathers and secrets so well hidden you don’t even know yourself.But, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late for phonecalls that helped soothe feverish worries, and occasional visits in cities where no-one knew them, a different menu every time.Maybe it wasn’t too late to send each other song recommendations and listen in the dark and pretend the other was just in the other room, and maybe sometimes it would actually be true.

Theo kissed Boris again, awake and sober and bathed in the white lightof the desert morning, and thought that maybe, just maybe, if he could get through everything else in his life he could get through that.


	6. Chapter 6

Theo shouldered through the entranceway without announcing his presence, hoping that Hobie wouldn’t hear him.He tried to maneuver his bag upstairs silently, but of course the wheels clattered against the siding and he had to clump backwards to avoid scratching the wood.

“Theo, dear, is that you?”Hobie called from the kitchen, and Theo winced.

“Yes, I just got in,” he called.“I think I’m just gonna go straight to bed though, I’m pretty beat.”

“Oh, well let me come say hello first!”And Theo had barely enough time between hearing a few soft footfalls in the hallway and Hobie’s frame appearing in the doorway to adjust his collar and hope it was enough to hide any evidence of what he’d been doing.

Hobie, in his bathrobe and reading glasses, paperback tucked under his arm, smiled widely and enveloped Theo in a warm and slightly rosemary scented embrace.As desperate as Theo was to get upstairs, into a shower and bed and a deep forgetful sleep, he couldn’t help but relax in Hobie’s arms.

“Flight not too bad I hope?” He said, and Theo extricated himself from his arms and hoisted his bag up a stair.

“Slept through the whole thing, luckily.And Vegas wasn’t even so bad.”

“And how was Boris?”

“He-” Hobie’s friendly gaze was all-encompassing.What was Theo supposed to even say? _He’s fine?He’s still the only person who’s ever really known me?I’ve been in love with him for ten years and now he’s off in some European shit-hole doing something that could get him killed and I’m just supposed to sell fucking tables?_

“He’s still the some Boris,” he said, which meant everything.Hobie nodded.

“You need a hand with your bag?”

“No, no that’s all right.”He made it halfway up the stairs, and turned.Hobie had one hand on the bannister, watching him climb.If anyone in the world would understand the ocean churning in his heart right now, it was Hobie.He could spill everything in the world to him, and he would smile and do his best to help clean up.The second Theo was ready he knew Hobie would be just beside him.

Instead of saying all that, Theo settled for the next best thing.

“Would you mind if Boris came to stay here sometime?Next time he’s in town, I mean?”Hobie smiled.

“Were you two making plans?”

“No, we-” _Making plans to make plans_. “Just thinking ahead.”

“Of course.Any friend of yours is welcome here.Especially Boris.”

Theo smiled, and Hobie started back into the kitchen.Theo could already begin to see the way Boris’ presence could color his world- vodka bottles clattering in the freezer, slush stained boots by the door doing murder or the hardwood.Boris’ jacket draped over his own on the bedpost, how he would have to roll Theo’s pajama pants to stop them flopping around his ankles, Kitsey’s spice girls t-shirt gaining cigarette holes and mysterious stains.Emerald and silver glinting from beneath black curls.

“By the way,” Hobie called from the kitchen.“You got a package. I put it on your bed.”

It was a sleek white box, typed shipping address with no return label.Theo turned it over in his hands a few times, oddly nervous to open it.It wasn’t heavy.Definitely not business related.He hoped it wasn’t meant for Kitsey, who had things she didn’t want her roommates to see shipped to him a few times.He wasn’t sure he could handle having to make arrangements for her to drop by and pick it up.

Knowing that waiting was just prolonging nothing, he slit the side open with his key and pulled out a tissue wrapped bundle.It was a shirt.Sleek and black, the kind of material that you knew was good from how ordinary it looked.When he slipped it on it was cool against his skin, but soft.Fit a bit tighter than what he normally wore, but in the right places, across his chest and forearms, so that when he twisted to see his reflection he could make out the litheness of his figure.A low collar that he didn’t bother doing up so that Boris’ kiss marks spilled over the top.He looked sleek and dirty all at once, and he looked good.He looked very, very good.

He already knew, of course, who had sent it.Only one person cared enough to drop money on him looking good.It was the kind of needling humor he loved, too.Poking fun at Theo’s comments on his all black ensemble, at the stained shirt he’d decided wasn’t even worth trying to bring home. The real mystery was when the hell Boris had found time to place the order.He’d spent most of the remaining hours in Vegas pinned to the couch beneath Theo, hands busy, until they’d checked the time in a moment of lucidity and had to race to the airport.

Boris had driven him to the domestic terminal, and before Theo could leave the car he’d grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into a kiss.Longer than a goodbye kiss.

“Boris, there are people here,” Theo said.

“What, are they going to run home and tell your wife?” And Theo had kissed him back quickly, a footnote on the entire trip.

That this time when he left Vegas, he would kiss Boris back.

“I’ll see you soon?” The question was hopeful, and not really a question.

“Of course Potter.So soon you’ll be sick of me.”

Still wearing the shirt Theo went back into the bedroom, phone in hand already planning what to say to Boris on the phone.He knocked the box off the bed, and a piece of paper fluttered out.It was a typed message, on the stationary of the clothing brand, clearly an option included with the gift receipt.

_Vienna.Three weeks from now.I will send you a ticket.See you then, moją miłością._

Theo put his phone on the bedside table and laid down, paper in his hand.The watermarked ceiling of his bedroom had never looked more familiar, the rays of sunset through the window never more beautiful.He didn’t need to talk to Boris to know that he was feeling the same- looking out the airplane window at some far off city bathed in pink light, and for the first time in a long time, safe.Knowing that the other was near, and hoping the transition back into each others’ lives, hearts, beds, would be smooth and swift.

Theo toed off his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt to go to sleep and dream of the future.What was it Boris had said?

_“Maybe we will both live to be old.And our wives will be dead, and our children grown, and no-one will remember us.Maybe then.”_

_Blood of my heart, finding its way home as sure as birds flew south._ Maybe it would take years, maybe they would both be old men before they could be together in body as well as soul.But maybe not.Maybe everything would go much faster than they’d imagined, and within the year Boris would be curled up beside him, breath in sync and hands hot against Theo’s side.

And if not, well, what is love for, if not a reason to grow old?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not immune to Boris wearing emerald earrings.
> 
> Also yeahhhh its done!!! took much longer than I'd hoped, but that doesn't matter now! Thank you to everyone who's read along and commented, here's to hoping this is what actually went down after the book ended.


End file.
